If Noah ran back the ark at the Summit of the Ararat, Türkiye would be visited to the passport. That explains, at least in part, the veil of melancholy that covers Yereván. All the postcards of that Caucasian city show it at the foot of the Biblical Mount that the Armenians venerate as a geographical symbol of their country. But since Ottoman times the totemic mountain is on the other side of the border. And for two years, another territory inhabited by Armenians since ancient times was also unattainable and remote: Artsaj.
This was called the tenth province of the ancient kingdom of Armenia, a name that recovered after the war in which its militias beat the army of Azerbaijan in the last decade of the 20th century, but lost again two years ago, for the fulminating offensive of the Azeries with the support of Türkiye. The defeat showed the Armenians their immense loneliness in the region and in the world. They were attacked and Russia turned their backs. They also turned their backs on the powers of the West who had to do something to help that Christian and democratic nation surrounded by Muslim self -critics.
Since the fall of Nagorno Karabaj under the control of Azerbaijan in 2023, Armenia faces the challenge of reinventing himself. Despite not having exits to the Caspian and the Black Sea, or floating in oil such as Azerbaijan, Armenia has a solid economy. That proves the ability of his people.
Before an auditorium full of journalists from all over the world to cover the second edition of Yereván Dialogue, President Vahan Jacathuryan managed to explain that the challenge is to reinvent the country, without forgetting Artsaj or the claim to Turkey of the territories of Anatolia that were emptied of Armenians, but understanding that the priority is to give Armenia Central and a position in the world. A hostile orb that has been orphan with Western leadership.
To Yerevan’s melancholy I breathed her the first time I arrived at this corner of the Caucasus. He was very young, the 20th century began to say goodbye and the Soviet Union still existed. Armenia bet on the “Glasnost” and the “Perestroika”, reforms that should revitalize the USSR but ended up burning it along with totalitarianism and the collectivist economy of centralized planning.
The Armenians had defeated the Azeri in Nagorno Karabaj and proclaimed Artsaj, an independent territory and twinned with Armenia. However, he did not have the independence of the ancient kingdom. In the Soviet Armenia the laws and politics that were dictated in Moscow ruled. The laws that today govern Armenia are created by their Parliament. Now it is an insular democracy between self -critics, but the Ararat is still in another country. As if the Kilimanjaro were in Kenya and not in Tanzania, or Mount Paektu were in China, no North Korea, the Armenians revere a sacred mountain whose summit expresses the high national aspirations, but is located on the Turkish side of the border.
Although there are still many Soviet insipidity monoblocs, this Armenian looks vigorous and its status can organize global scale events such as Yereván Dialogue, where high government officials from all over the world, together with scientists, professionals and experts in the areas pointed in the program, addressed those crucial themes today.
Armenia looks its democracy and a cultured society. But the loneliness of his Christian culture and his rule of law made it impossible to resist the last military offensive launched as a blitzkrieg (lightning war) by the Azeri with the endorsement of Erdogán and Turkish military support, leaving another ancestral territory inhabited by Armenians in the hands of a foreign state.
That enclave was under total control of Azerbaijan, within whose map is found from the Soviet era, when he enjoyed an autonomy that was about to lose after the collapse of the USSR but that the victory of the Armenians in the war of the late 20th century turned into Artsaj, an independent state of fact, although only recognized by Armenia.
The offensive that in 2023 launched the Azerí despota Ilhan Aliyev, made Artsaj be called Nagorno Karabaj and be governed by the laws of Azerbaiyan. Just as it had happened in Nagicheván, the Mountain Enclave Armenians were deported in mass or escaped as soon as the Azeri troops entered Stepankert, the capital Karabajsí. Now, in addition to the mountain where the biblical tradition says that the Ark of Noah said, another territory linked to the national Armenian identity has been beyond its borders.
In Yereván and other cities in the Caucasian country, many walls have painted the faces and names of the fallen fighters in the wars by Artsaj. Those street graffiti now evoke a military defeat, which caused the Armenians to be completely discovered in Central Asia and also in the world. Only the fidelity of the diaspora initiated by the ethnic cleansing of Sultan Abdul Hammid in the 19th century, and bounds by the genocidal regime of “Turkish young people”.
Two years ago, when the Azeri forces entered the Armenian enclave, Russia looked the other way. Yereván had always trusted Moscow, but Vladimir Putin reformulated the geopolitical interest of the Kremlin. The other members of the Collective Security Treaty, Kazakhsán, Kirguisia and Tayikistan, also betrayed Armenia when the Turkish-Azerí offensive occurred. That is why President Nicol Pashinian decided to leave that unusable military alliance. But neither did Europe and the United States reacted in defense of the lonely Christian culture that created and sustains a democracy in Central Asia.
Vahagn Jacaturyán understood that Armenia must reinvent himself in the region and resituate in the world. The president cannot say anything that sounds to give up Artsaj but knows that nothing can be done now. It is not time to think about Artsaj but to reinvent Armenia’s survival in a region where he has no allies and is in a world that no longer has a political and cultural leadership of the West.
Artsaj was very far despite being so close. Like Mount Ararat.
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